That war is a racket
has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he
wrote the landmark book War
is a Racket in 1935, the highly decorated U.S. General Smedley
Butler (two Congressional Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for
this timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. Below is an
engaging two-page summary.

WAR
IS A RACKET – by General Smedley Butler

War
is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most
profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are
reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. In the World War [World
War I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new
millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World
War. That many admitted huge gains in their income tax returns. How many other
war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note
these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10
or more]

WHO
MAKES THE PROFITS?

The
World War cost the United States some $52 billion. That means $400 [over
$4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. The
normal yearly profits of a business concern in the U.S. are 6 to 12%. But
war-time profits, that is another matter – 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% –
the sky is the limit. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course,
it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about
patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the
wheel," but the profits jump, leap, and skyrocket – and are safely
pocketed.

Take
our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war earnings of the
du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. Now let's look at
their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million
a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of
normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950%.

Take
one of our steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million.
Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to
munitions making. Did their profits jump? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49
million a year! Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during
the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Then along came
the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period
1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.

They
sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers
overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there were no
mosquitoes in France. When the war was over some 4 million sets of equipment –
knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this
side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the
contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them.

If
anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships
rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to
stockholders. Their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the
bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those
little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
It has been estimated that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion [X 10 or
more for inflation]. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual
war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the
21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion profits is
not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

WHO
PAYS THE BILLS?

Who
provides these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We
all pay them – in taxation. But the soldier pays the biggest part of
the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on
the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United
States. On a tour of the country, I visited 18 government hospitals for
veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the
pick of the nation 18 years ago. Mortality among veterans is three times as
great as those who stayed at home.

Boys
with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the offices, factories, and classrooms
and put into the ranks. There they were remolded. They were made to
"about face," to regard murder as the order of the day. They
were put through mass psychology and entirely changed. We trained them to think
nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharged them
and told them to make another "about face!" This time they had to do
their own readjustment. We didn't need them any more. Many of these fine young
boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final
"about face" alone.

Beautiful
ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the
"war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe
for democracy." No one mentioned to them that their going and
their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers
that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one
told them that their ships might be torpedoed by submarines built with United
States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious
adventure."

HOW
TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

Well,
it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way
to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it
by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it
out by resolutions. Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket: 1) We
must take the profit out of war; 2) We must permit the youth of the
land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war; and 3) We
must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

I
am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people
do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another
war. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that
he had "kept us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress
to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval the people had
not been asked whether they had changed their minds. Then what caused our
government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.

An
allied commission came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the
President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the
commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the
President and his group: "There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The
cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American
munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American
exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the
US we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money.
So..."

Had
secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations, and had the press been invited
to be present at that conference, America never would have entered the war.
But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy.
When our boys were sent off, they were told it was a "war to make the world
safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars." Very little has
been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all
wars. Disarmament conferences don't mean a thing. At all these conferences,
lurking in the background are the sinister agents of those who profit by war.
They see to it that these conferences do not seriously limit armaments. So...I
say, TO HELL WITH WAR!